Warmth in Your Character Home

As the warm summer months fade, the charm and uniqueness of some of today's character homes can fade along with it. This is because many of the older homes have insufficient insulation, especially compared to the recommended norm for today's homes. However recent technology has come up with an efficient way to insulate these homes.

The blanket wrap that we are all so familiar with is not so easily installed into older houses. Perhaps when most of them were built was not invented. Even when it was, the suggested R value was much lower than the recommendation for now. The R value of insulation is a measure of thermal resistance; contra to what you may think, doubling the thickness of the insulation will not double the R value.

In the older home, blanket rolls of insulation can be laid in the attic, to stop the warm air from escaping into the roof and on up. However, often the thin walls will allow just as much warmth out and cold air in, so insulation is needed here too.

In order to install the insulation batts between the inner and outer wall, the home would have to be redecorated. If the rooms are in good repair and you do not want to take down the inner walls to insulate, you will have to consider some other form of insulation.

The most obvious method would be that of 'blowing in' insulation. This can take the form of blown in foam, or blown in cellulose. A machine with a long hose 'blows in' the product which settles and fills up any cavity between the inner and outer shell of the house.

This blowing - in process is usually enabled by drilling a hole about 2 inches in diameter on either your outside or inside walls (whichever you feel are the easiest to patch up.) If your home is supported in the normal way - by vertical wooden beams that are placed 16" apart - you will need a hole every 16".

Usually the hardware depot that stocks this type of product will also rent the blower machines that are required to install the blown in product. The DIY sites on the Internet suggest that you use a friend who will load the bags of fill into the blower while you are holding the hose. There are also companies listed in the Yellow Pages, or listed on the Internet that can do the entire job for you.

If you are hoping to negotiate any kind of discount, it will not be in the winter when everyone suddenly gets cold and wants blown-in insulation - it will be now in the warmer months, when there is less demand and it t is also less arduous for a contractor to work.